Monday, March 26, 2007

Who Are They Kidding?

by digby

Gonzales appeared with softball pitcher Pete Williams today and babbled the usual about how he didn't know nothin' bout birthin' no babies. But this struck me:

Gonzales: The president — the White House has already confirmed that there was a conversation with the president, mentioned it to me in a meeting at the Oval Office — in terms of concerns about — about the commitment — to pursue voter fraud cases in — in three jurisdictions around the country. I don't remember that conversation, but what I'm saying is during the process there may have been other conversations about specifically about the performance of US attorneys. But I wasn't involved in the deliberations as to whether or not a particular United States attorney should or should not be asked to resign.

I have been following this fairly closely, but I haven't heard about three jurisdictions. I thought it was just New Mexico.

Perhaps I'm wrong about that, but I'm not wrong about the insult to my intelligence when wingnuts persist in saying that it's perfectly normal that the president of the United States took an unusual interest in alleged Democratic voter fraud that certain party members said weren't being aggressively enough pursued by the Republican prosecutors he himself appointed. Why would he put any credence into such complaints? His prosecutors weren't Democrats --- they had no agenda. And the inappropriateness of a president interfering in such things is so obvious that any man with integrity would have dropped that hot potato the instant it was put to him --- it just doesn't get any more wrong than him putting the heat on his Justice department to prosecute members of the opposite party on trumped up electoral fraud. After all, there is no evidence that the president or anyone else took an interest in the issue of electoral integrity in general or were concerned about the numerous issues raised by Democrats during the last two presidential elections, so no one can reasonably claim that this was about policy.

What this white house appears to have done goes to the very heart of our democratic system. It's true that he can fire anyone he wants but being party to a plan to rig elections is impeachable.